ZAPANTERA NEGRA
A multimedia exploration of the artistic
and political connections between the Black Panther Party and the
Zapatista movements as incubated in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas,
Mexico. To coincide with Emory Douglas', the former Minister of Culture
for the Black Panther Party, residency in its space, EDELO (En Donde
Era La ONU), a creative laboratory, will develop an art exhibition and
single-issue newsletter. The exhibition will showcase pieces by local
Zapatista artists and will explore their artistic identification with
the Zapatista and Black Panther movements; the newsletter will pay
homage to Douglas' work in the Black Panthers' popular press and will
showcase new articles and artworks that will explore the connections
between art and social movements as manifested in today's multifaceted
world.

Project Overview
At the peak of its popularity
in 1970, 139,000 copies of The Black Panther newsletter were
distributed throughout the United States on a weekly basis. Within its
pages, Emory Douglas, the movement’s Minister of Culture, published his
artworks in an effort to “illustrate[e] conditions that made revolution
seem necessary; and... construct a visual mythology of power for people
who felt powerless and victimized.” The newsletter and its accompanying
illustrations played a central role in the articulation of the “What We
Want, What We Believe” portion of the Black Panther’s Ten Point Program

In
1994, the Zapatista uprising, a Mexican, indigenous movement
originating in the southern state of Chiapas, generated and disseminated
a different sort of mass communication made possible by the rise of the
internet. Photographic, video, and written information regarding the
movement’s actions spread around the world in real time, increasing
awareness of the Zapatista cause while also building solidarity for what
the New York Times termed “the first post-modern revolution.”
Positioning itself as a struggle against neoliberalism waged against 500
years of oppression, Zapatismo has employed new technologies of
information distribution in order to articulate their wants, beliefs,
and various identities to themselves and to their global audience.

The
Black Panther and the Zapatista movements occurred in distinct
cultural, political, and historical milieus; nonetheless, the two share a
common appreciation of the power of the image and the written word to
build their respective social movements into personal, collective,
transformative, and public experiences.
In contrast to the strong self-definition established and disseminated
by these two movements via pertinent media channels, today’s multimedia,
plugged-in landscape seems to promote the opposite development.

Today
we tweet, text, and browse through myriad contexts, occasionally
gaining a glimpse into the exterior world but more frequently losing
ourselves in the internet’s echo chamber of opinions and perspectives.
ZAPANTERA NEGRA (ZPN) will be a single-run magazine of 20,000 full-color
copies that will merge the powerful imagery and layout style of Emory
Douglas with the visions and voices of Zapatista painters and embroidery
collectives. It will bring the two similar movements together on the
page to demonstrate their commonalities, tie the movements to the
present, and articulate a new, collaborative, interdisciplinary mode of
information distribution and political, social, and economic
self-identification.
Emory Douglas, the former Minister of Culture
for the Black Panther Party, will be in residency at EDELO in Chiapas,
Mexico in November of 2012. During his time in Chiapas, he will visit
Zapatista communities and work with Zapatista painters while
simultaneously guiding a team of artists and editors in the layout and
construction of ZPN. The newsletter will also include personal
reflections authored by writers, academics, and artists on how art has
moved and encouraged their own self-definition, work, and hope in a
possible, better world.
ZAPANTERA NEGRA will be distributed in
five countries and within select educational, artistic, and political
institutions. Its project coordinators hope to develop a grassroots
distribution network that will also allow for its dissemination to
communities with little access to alternative media. The newsletter will
also have a social media platform where “friends,” “followers,” and
“fans” will be able to download, print, and wheatpaste the newsletter on
overpasses and walkways.
The newsletter production and distribution will be paralleled by the
production of a collection of tapestries made by Zapatista embroidering
communities that merge and exchange Black Panther imagery as articulated
by Emory Douglas with that of the Zapatista movement.

Since this work will be distributed for free in various
cities, and the team in general is volunteering their talents, with the
exception of small symbolic stipends that will be given to those working
with translation, the woman's embroidery collectives, editors and
administrative work; we are depending on the enthusiasm of artist
collectives and a real collaborative effort between the team at large.
This creates challenges in organizing for the success of all three parts
of this project. Emory Douglas Residency - Art exhibition - and the
News Letter. For that we have put together a wonderful team with
extended experience in running a succesfull Residency program with all
artist involved, Curating a complex exhibition celebrating political art
with the use of performance, installation, and video. We are also
working with local editors and publishers from a local independent news
paper Mirada Sur in Chiapas MX to guide us with the lagistics of working
with the printed medium.
This project was presented at the 2012 Creative Time summit in New York October 12. You can watch the presentation at http://new.livestream.com/creativetime/Summit
TIMELINE
October/November: Kickstarter campaign
November 4-16: Emory Douglas residency; newsletter organization and curation begins
November 10: Inauguration of "Zapantera Negra" art exhibition
December: Newsletter call for submissions; revision and organization of content
January: Publication of newsletter
February: Simultaneous distribution of newsletter in various,
alternative art spaces in Honduras, Chile, Mexico, the US, and Spain.

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